Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-18

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries, primary and secondary schools close for two months or more in the summer holidays.

What is the value of long school holidays?

What are the arguments in favour of shorter school holidays?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Long summer holidays, primarily the time span of two months or more are highly essential for primary and secondary students as they ensure that students get to enjoy the importance of recreation.Attending school back and forth exhaust the students are they are young and they should be taught the fairness of work and leisure time.Thats when these holidays indulge them in productive and fun activities.For instance, in my hometown, these long holidays call for recreational summer camps , where students enroll in different activities like baking , karate and learning basic life hacks.These activities help the students mindset to stay sharp active and involved.In addition, these holidays give students ample time to refresh and go back to learning routine after the holidays.

Few arguments could be raised in favour of shorted school holidays as the students are no longer in the constant cycle of discipline and forget the importance of time.They become sluggish, they spend their time watching the television and playing video games all day long which diverts thier minds from study.Consistent Increase in the screen time for young students can make them less interested in interacting with others and can create anger issues too. Moreover, staying away from school for so long can diminish their intrerest in learning and understanding.

To conclude, i would emphasize that although its important that students do get holidays to freshen up from the boring routine of school still the span of these vacations matter too.As both the span have their pros and cons, it highly depends on the enviornment student is provided in the holidays whisch should be productive and a source of fun too.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt, discussing both the value of long school holidays and the arguments in favour of shorter ones. The student presents a clear position and supports ideas with relevant examples, such as summer camps involving baking and karate. However, the development of ideas in the second paragraph is slightly limited and could be explored further with concrete examples of academic decline. Despite minor under-development, all parts of the task are addressed adequately, aligning well with the Band 6 descriptors.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The response has an overall coherent arrangement and is divided into appropriate paragraphs representing an introduction, body paragraphs for each prompt question, and a conclusion. Logical progression is generally maintained, though transitions between sentences can feel slightly mechanical. Cohesive devices such as 'In addition', 'Moreover', and 'To conclude' are used, but referencing is occasionally faulty, such as 'both the span have their pros and cons' where pronoun agreement is unclear. Paragraphing is present but could be managed more effectively to separate distinct points.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student attempts a range of vocabulary appropriate for the task, using terms such as 'recreation', 'productive', 'sluggish', and 'diminish'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, such as 'shorted' instead of 'shorter', 'thier' instead of 'their', 'intrerest', 'enviornment', and 'whisch'. Collocations are occasionally awkward, such as 'exhaust the students are they are young'. This represents an adequate range for the task with frequent spelling errors that do not severely impede communication, placing the writing firmly at Band 5.5 to 6.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as conditional and relative clauses ('where students enroll in different activities...'). However, grammatical errors are frequent throughout the response. Examples include subject-verb agreement issues like 'Attending school back and forth exhaust the students are they are young' and punctuation and capitalization lapses, such as missing apostrophes in 'its' and 'dont' equivalents, and lowercase 'i'. While communication is rarely impeded entirely, the density of grammatical and punctuation errors prevents the response from reaching Band 6.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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